Les Welcome
Whether by intent or tragic mis-typing, you’ve landed on the home of Les Garagistes winery collective. If you’re new to our dark cabal, a rich and heady stew of bad French grammar and subterranean winemaking awaits. But where to start? Here are a few suggestions:
- First, you might take a quick stroll through last year’s vintage escapades, accumulated over the two critical months of September 2009 and October 2009 (remember that the posts are presented with the earliest at the bottom of the page).
- Then, who are these Garagistes and where do they get off? And didn’t I hear they were dead?
- We sully the fine pages of Fine Cooking Magazine
- Winehenge: the movie. If that’s not enough to get you to click…
- A French oak barrel primer
- Red, Rex Sox (Yankees fans, be forewarned)
- Plastic capsules and why we switched to paper
- Lastly, mourn with the Moody Blues as they appear to lament the end of a Les Garagistes harvest.
Thanks much for stopping by. We’ve got fruit lined up for 2010 — with new varietals ensuring we’ll be making even more up as we go along — so another exciting vintage is just ahead. Hope you can join us for it, and let us know what you think of what we’ve cobbled together.
Ladies and gentlemen: your 2007 Peugeot
Last weekend, a bunch of us got together for BlendFest II — This Time, It’s Gonna be War, but in contrast to BlendFest I a month ago, we have a clear winner for the 2007 Peugeot blend:
- 50% Cabernet Sauvignon
- 15% Merlot
- 35% Cabernet Franc
A big part of the reason we couldn’t settle on a blend the first time around is because the Franc was still muddy from the CPR we’d given it a few weeks prior. We tasted that it was reviving, but it was also clear that what we were tasting was a stop a long the way, not the final destination.
I’m glad we waited. By last weekend, the Franc was much more lively and fragrant — maybe still a little thick, as if shaking off the last whisps of anesthesia, but much more like the wine we’ve come to love over the years.
We started with the blend we’d all grudgingly favored from the first round (45/15/40), but the newly revived Franc forced us to immediately recalibrate. Then, with surprising speed and unanimity, we zeroed in on the blend above. Garagistes’ notes include “best so far,” “better, consistent experience and good length,” “more Loire flavor, and lively acidity in the finish.” My notes say “Lovely nose, and amazing in the mouth. Nice and rich, but with great balance and a long, fresh finish.”
I think everyone walked away excited to drink this baby in about a year. Its journey will continue today, as we blend it off an seal it away for another 6 months of aging.
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[...] concocted the Peugeot blend and put it back in neutral barrels first. That meant measuring out the right percentage from each of the three constituent barrels (Cab, Merlot, Franc) into a holding tank, one after the [...]